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Try out our new Beta Editor!

Rieann Brown

started a topic
4 months ago

Hello Amara users,

You may have noticed the new "Beta Editor" button on the Amara platform. That's because we are officially retiring our Legacy subtitle editor, and replacing it with some new features we hope will help you subtitle easier! We listened to feedback from our users and built some improvements into a beta version of the new editor, which will soon be incorporated into the main platform. We’ll incorporate all the new beta features into the editor soon.

Until then, you can switch to the beta editor for any of your subtitling work by clicking the “Beta Editor” button in the upper right of the editor screen, and switch back using the “Default Editor” button in the same spot.

Important: Please be sure to save your work each time before switching.

Let’s take a look at some of our new Beta Editor features!

Switch up your workflow

The workflow steps in the upper right of the editor are now text links, which you can use to switch between typing, syncing, or reviewing your subtitles.

Colorful warning for character and line limits

If a subtitle does not comply with the line and character limits listed in the info tray, the subtitle handles are highlighted in orange in the timeline. This warning can help you catch mistakes while you are syncing your subtitles.

Subtitles in the video player

The video player always shows synced subtitles at the current time in the video.

If you click an unsynced subtitle to start an edit, you will see the subtitle show up on the video player while you are editing. This gives you an extra point of reference within the context of the video.

Syncing improvements

The beta editor has larger subtitle endpoint “handles” that can be selected one at a time or together. With these handles, you can move two adjacent subtitle endpoints at the same time. If you hover over or select a subtitle handle, the handle will highlight light blue.

Note: To select two subtitle endpoints at the same time, the endpoints have to be exactly next to each other.

You can also nudge subtitle beginning and end points by selecting a handle and using your left and right arrow keys to adjust by small increments.

The new Alt+S keyboard shortcut will move the nearest subtitle handle to the current time in your video.

We’ve also removed the “start now” and “end now” indicators that we used to show when syncing subtitles.

Help us continue to improve the new features by sharing your thoughts on this forum or emailing us at support@amara.org.

Claude Almansi

said
3 months ago

Thank you, Kenzie!

Re the issues described in the screenshot and in your following post: I don't experience them because I tend to stop playing before using arrows (yeah, I know, that's not what we are meant to do, but I am very clumsy so that's how I can use Amara without going bonkers). but my guess is that many people also stop playing the video when they are fine-tuning the syncing (review - approve), because it's difficult to really finetune in flow.